The Starbucks' red cup controversy is so idiotic that no less an authority than Bristol Palin warned that it was a trap by the liberal media to make Christians look stupid. If media are to blame, the culprit is social media and its ability to make mountains out of molehills.

The hubbub apparently started with an Arizona-based social media evangelist who claimed the giant coffee chain took Christ and Christmas off its holiday cups this year as an accommodation to political correctness, a maneuver in the war on Christmas. His screed went viral on the Internet.

Please. With all else going on in the world, this doesn't need to be a controversy. Starbucks never had Christ or Christmas on its holiday coffee cups, just general holiday images such as snowmen, reindeer, pine trees and snowflakes. This year, the 18th for the holiday cups, it went to plain red. That somehow is big whoop? The company is not a combatant in the (utterly phony) war on Christmas; it sells an Advent Calendar, "Christmas Blend" coffee and such. Its customers include Christians and non-Christians, and it tries to make all of them feel welcome — the kind of thinking that makes the company successful.

So enough. But since the subject is raised, there is something Starbucks and other coffee chains could do with paper cups, and that is to put fewer of them into the waste stream. Offer a small financial incentive — something most Americans love and respond to — for bringing your own mug. It would be a holiday treat for the environment.